Mozilla's Thunderbird mail client is a redesign of the Mozilla mail component. Our goal is to produce a cross platform stand alone mail application using the XUL user interface language. We are modeling ourselves after the Firebird rewrite of the Mozilla browser. Our intended customer is someone who uses Firebird (or another non-mozilla browser) as their primary browser and wants a mail client based on mozilla that "plays nice" with their browser. Currently, mozilla-mail is not a good option for these users because link clicks and attachments end up going to mozilla browser windows instead of the preferred browser. In addition, by focusing solely on stand alone mail, we believe we can make some dents in the overall footprint and performance of the mail client by removing components and chrome we don't need. On top of that, the UI becomes much cleaner as a standalone application as opposed to being part of the mozilla suite.
